Growth by acquisition is the fastest way to grow, and it’s easier than you may think! On this episode of Lawyer Business Advantage, Alay Yajnik speaks with Gideon Grunfeld, President of Rainmaking for Lawyers. Gideon share his perspective and thoughts on strategic planning, law firm succession, and law firm acquisition.
Alay Yajnik: Welcome to Lawyer Business Advantage, your source for biz dev tips, wisdom and inspiration. I’m your host, Alay Yajnik. We’re unleashing your inner rainmaker in three…two….one….
Alay Yajnik: And it’s my pleasure to welcome to the show, Gideon Grunfeld. Gideon is the President of Rainmaking for Lawyers. Gideon, welcome to Lawyer Business Advantage.
Gideon Grunfeld: Pleasure to be here.
Alay Yajnik: Thanks so much for for joining us today. And so I guess we’re getting into what was your inspiration and your background for founding rainmaking for lawyers?
Gideon Grunfeld: RFL, as I call it, is basically an outgrowth of what I did before, so I was a law firm, large law firm, associate and litigator for almost 10 years. And before that, I was a campaign manager. I was our executive. I was a consultant for a group of people who were statistical geniuses and expert witnesses. And I translated what they try to say into English for humans because they were basically all PhDs in statistics. So after being in the litigation world in large, large scale litigation for ten years, I wanted to do something that was based on my expertise and an audience that I knew and cared about. And so that’s how we created RFL. We consult for lawyers and we also coach them on business development and other strategic planning issues. But it was a pretty direct result of what I had done before and what you done before.
Alay Yajnik: Yeah. You know, one of the nice things about having your own business, too, is that we are in positions of being able to really seize trends and opportunities that we see on the horizon and maybe move much faster to take advantage of those than if we were part of a larger organization with a very specific kind of “cog in the wheel” type of role. And one of the things that, Gideon, you and I have been talking about is this idea of a lot of the generational impacts that are going on right now with with baby boomers exiting. Millennials now comprise the majority of the workforce. There’s a lot of changes that are happening. And you throw the pandemic on top of it. I know a lot of a lot of lawyers are saying, look, I’ve been doing this for a very long time. I don’t need to adjust to a remote workforce on top of everything else. What trends are you seeing in that law firm succession space?
Gideon Grunfeld: Law firm succession is really become – and I’ve done this long enough that it went from a curiosity, which was what it was when I first started talking about it or having programs about it at bar associations and in other venues. And now it’s become in the last, I would say, three or four years, something that is much more top of mind. And as you pointed out, there’s no question that COVID-19 has absolutely been an accelerant to that process. And it’s been an accelerant both for the people who are thinking of winding down. And they kind of fall into two categories. There are people for whom COVID-19 is a signal for them that, “Look, the underlying fund or the economics or the dynamics of the practice I’m in are so unattractive or the changes that would be required are so extensive that this is a good time for me to get off of the bus,” and usually not for health issues. And so the cases and the matters where we’re consulting, it’s usually not because someone has tested positive or they’ve had a light over their head that way. It’s more like, “I’ve been doing this a long time and the underlying attractiveness of the practice is so diminished.” Then there are people who are thinking, “I want to cash out. I don’t want to commit to do what’s necessary and I want to...